13.07
I was the monster from the movies. Difficult to put down, creative in how I killed. I operated by a pattern, and I accomplished what I set out to do.
In assuming my role, here, in lining things up and knocking them down, in sticking to my word, and in doing justice, I was being rewarded by the universe. Things were being allowed to go my way. I didn’t have the burden of Thorburn karma. I was fledgling, relatively newborn, and the parts of me that were older were being subsumed, eroded away in favor of me becoming more of a monster. I was becoming less of a fragment of Russel or Ross Thorburn, and more of a complete Other thing.
I had no illusions. I was walking a fine line, a tightrope. One serious mistake, and I stood to fall, and fall hard.
The Duchamps were walking through the dark and the drifting snow. I barely looked at them, my eyes on the ground where I walked, my attention elsewhere.
“They’re going to see us,” Evan said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is bad,” Evan said, stressing the words, like I was a small child.
“It’s good,” I murmured. “I can tell when they’re scared. The trick is to only give them glances of us. Get them nervous. Let them worry.”
I glanced at Green Eyes.
“What do you think I was doing when we first met?” she asked. “I thought if you startled and fell, I could catch you.”
I nodded.
By all rights, I should have been annoyed. I had concerns about Green Eyes, that went beyond the fact that she openly talked about murdering people. She was impulsive, and that wasn’t just a problem in terms of the risk it posed to her, but it was a problem in the risk it posed to her victims.
That woman, Jan, I wasn’t sure she’d really deserved to be killed.
“Green Eyes,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You made me a promise, that you would be careful about who you targeted.”
“Yeah.”
“One of the four remaining targets is the old man in that group.”
“With the necklace?” Evan asked.
“Yeah. With the necklace. His schtick is messing with fortune, basically. He knows how to play the game, how to get the universe on his side, and presumably that means things go against his opponents.”
“Against us,” Green Eyes said.
“Against us,” I said.
I felt a spike of attention as someone noticed me, peering backward over their shoulder and into the gloom.
I changed direction, picking up speed, and let them put some distance between myself and them.
The fear only heightened, in the moment they lost sight of me.
“You’ll need to be especially careful when we go up against him,” I said. “You can’t jump in like you have twice now, especially now that we’ve got a guy like him in play. Even if you think I’m in danger. Even if we aren’t fighting him, specifically. Even after, it’s just…”
“Okay,” Green Eyes said.
“Okay?” Just like that.
“I’ll try.”
“I may need more than a try,” I said. “If you go after the wrong person, or if his magic kicks in and throws a wrench in the works…”
“I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try.”
“You don’t trust yourself enough to be sure?”
She turned her face up to look at me. I hadn’t realized how dark it really was, with how my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and my natural ability to see in darkness. But her eyes glowed much as they had in the oppressive darkness of the Drains.
“Do you trust yourself?” she asked.
I didn’t have an honest answer for her.
“That’s not supposed to be snarky or clever. It’s a real question,” she said. “Physically, you’re about as messed up as I am. But your head? Your heart? That’s different. You get hurt and you fill in the gaps with bits of ‘monster’, but you’re doing it faster than I was. But the stuff that hurts your body is different than stuff that hurts your head and your heart.”
“You’re asking how hurt my heart and head are?”
“Yeah.”
“If that kind of hurt affects your head, then I feel like I should be more monstrous than I am, there.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do you trust yourself, when you think about that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fairly sure I do.”
“A small part of me feels like I was the sort of person who didn’t trust herself, even before I was a monster,” Green Eyes told me. “How can I be sure I can trust myself now?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “I wish I had an answer.”
“You’re such a guy,” she said. “God. Not every question needs an answer. Not every problem needs advice. Sometimes the question is an answer. My question was an answer.”
“Oh, oh, I know this one!” Evan chimed in. “Rhetorical question.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Green Eyes said.
“But it’s still rhetorical!”
“Shh,” I said, “We don’t want them to hear. There are some Others in that group.”
“It’s still rhetorical,” Evan whispered. Green Eyes raised her head to stick her tongue out at him.
We were drawing closer to the retreating group. The conversation was distracting from my thoughts about strategy, how to deal with them before they found a sanctuary of sorts. Getting them scared was good. Scared meant they were more likely to make mistakes, or to show their hands.
They were, I noted, putting more creatures in the back ranks.
“I think being with you helps,” Green Eyes said, her voice small.
I glanced down at her.
“With my feeling sure of myself.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
Evan looked up at me. He switched to looking down at her, for just a second, as if he were checking something, then looked up at me.
He hopped in place once, silent.
“Good,” I said.
Green Eyes smiled.
Evan sighed.
Why did Green Eyes seem to associate creepy, predator-ish situations with these sorts of discussions? In grave danger? I like you! Stalking potential victims? You’re swell!
I had to focus. We didn’t have a lot of time, and we needed to figure out an angle for attack. We’d caught them off guard once. Then we’d hit them from the air… I’d been hoping that the darkness, the cold, and the general ambiance of a town at war would generate cracks I could manipulate.
The way things were going, however, it looked like fear wouldn’t provide any choice opportunities to pick off members of the crowd. Mason Hall-McCullough, as it happened, had a lot of luck to spare, and it was helping him there.